Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Islamic Fascism

Russ Feingold attack is that that Bush should not use the term "Islamic Fascism". (MSNBC. Personally, I this adjective noun combination is extremely apropriate in context of modern debate.

The reason I like the terminology is that the adjective noun combination emphasizes that the problems happening in Iran are not coming from Islam. What is happening is that people are perverting the Islamic faith for a fascist end.

I think Saddam Hussein could accurately be called an "Islamic Stalinist". He had scores of books on Stalin. He idealized Stalin and he adapted Stalinistic techniques to an Islamic nation. Hussein even went as far as to have his security guards trained in East Germany.

Iran has a strong fascist element. During WWII, the Nazis had people in the country training them in fascist propaganda techniques. Allaytollah Khomeini learned revolutionary theory (Marxist Dialectic) in France. After his revolution, he set up a nationalistic nation state that used many of the same techniques as the communists and fascists of the west.

Apparently, what Bush is hoping to do in both Afghanistan and Iraq is to give these Arab nations an opportunity to set up Islamic democracies. Bush seems to understand that such democracies must be defined by the Islamic people. As a result, Bush has allowed for great leaway in the way that things are set up.

The theory behind using terms like "Islamic Fascism" is that the Islamic world is gripped in the same ideological struggles of the West. In my opinion, the use of adjective/noun combination does a great job of saying that the enemy we are facing is not Islam.

Feingold remark is that Muslims are too stupid to understand the use of modifiers. They read the adjectic/noun combination "Islamic Fascist" as the proposition "Islam is a Fascist religion" or that "Muslims are fascists."

Here is a quote from the MSNBC article: Feingold said: "We must avoid using misleading and offensive terms that link Islam with those who subvert this great religion or who distort its teachings to justify terrorist activities,"

That is exactly what the adjective/noun combination "Islamic Fascists" does. It is saying that the people spreading hate in the Islamic world are essentially fascists who are using Islam for evil purposes.

This was a very poor argument on the part of Feingold.

Webster defines fascism as: "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition."

The Islamic world has the problem that a group in their country are trying to establish an autocratic state by exalting their race and an idealized Islamic state over the individuals.

Much of the philosophy of the modern jihadist religion can be traced back to infiltration of Nazis. Many of the Islamic leaders